The 1986 Cleveland Browns made one of strangest films in NFL history

Members of the 1986 Cleveland Browns star in “Masters of the Gridiron”

In 1985, the Chicago Bears released the iconic “Super Bowl Shuffle” rap video then went on to win an NFL title. The following year, the Cleveland Browns decided they wanted to try to follow suit, but opted to up the ante a little bit. The result? An amazingly bizarre 17-minute live action short film called “Masters of the Gridiron” that features members of the team dressed like He-Man characters fighting ninjas, bears and even an evil lord to capture an elusive ring.

Former Browns center Mike Baab starred in the film and his wife, Lolis Garcia-Baab, produced it. They both spoke to For The Win about just how this offbeat piece of NFL history came to be for this week’s edition of Throwback Thursday.

“The NFL was getting very involved with the United Way at that time,” Garcia-Baab, who was working in video production at the time, told For The Win. “We decided to do a fundraiser for the United Way and had done a Christmas video [with the players] the year before. We saw the Chicago Bears video and this was when MTV was really popular and actually played music videos. We actually started with the idea of doing a music video.”

Baab, who was in his fifth season with the Browns in 1986, had already become a fan favorite in Cleveland. Even prior to the video, a small subsection of fans in the old Municipal Stadium had started calling themselves “Baab’s Barbarians”, and would dress in medieval costumes and bring (fake) swords into the facility. Often Baab would emerge from the huddle and make a gesture towards the group where he’d raise a fake sword.

“After watching the Chicago video and watching Mike Singletary try to rap, all the guys said ‘We’re not going to do that.’ We’ll do something fun but we’re not going to do that. We sat around one night with a guy named Rick DeChant who was a local comedy writer and a guy named Tom Pattison who Lolis had met through some of the video work she did,” Baab said. “We said ‘What can we do that’s different that might stir up some attention?’ This is before viral, back before buzz and all those kinds of words. I was a big Conan the Barbarian fan so Lolis up and said ‘Why don’t we do a barbarian adventure?’ We started to open the bottles of wine and two or three hours later we had written Masters of the Gridiron.”

The “Baabarian” was born.

“Can you imagine a bunch of NFL players out with axes, swords and swinging them in active sword battles on our days off?” Baab said. “I don’t think the Browns had any idea what we were doing. They would not have allowed it.”

But the league offices did allow it after Garcia-Baab flew to New York to get NFL approval for the project. Since proceeds from local sales of the video were going to the United Way, the film was given the green light. They shot on two consecutive Tuesdays in September, luring teammates including Hanford Dixon, Ozzie Newsome, Earnest Byner, Clay Matthews and Bob Golic to Squires Castle, an abandoned building and estate in nearby Willoughby Hills that had been taken over by Cleveland Metroparks.

“The guys were in on it right away when they figured out that we’re going to dress in furs and carry axes,” Baab said. “Guys had no idea what they were showing up for. They were my buddies and they all showed up. The ones that didn’t do it, like Cody Risien and Brian Brennan, to this day they wish they were part of Masters of the Gridiron.”

“All of them said the same thing. ‘Don’t make me look stupid and do I get a line?'”

In addition to the Browns players, additional cast members included a trained bear and Tiny Tim, a quirky ukulele player best known for his late-night TV appearances. The script called for an “evil lord” and Pattison knew Tiny from a prior project and figured he’d be perfect for it.

“[Tiny] was a unique individual,” Baab said. “He was terrified of the bear and would not come down from the top of the Squires Castle until the bear was back in his trailer. He thought the bear wanted to eat him.”

Baab didn’t have such concerns and started wrestling with the bear between takes, footage of which was inserted into the final cut without having much relevance to the plot. It wasn’t the only random thing. As the warriors plan to storm a hill in one part of the film, one of Baab’s teammates trips, forcing another to make a joke about the competing USFL, which was siphoning a lot of the league’s talent at the time.

“We threw [that line] in after because at the time, we didn’t realize as stupid NFL players that it was about to raise our salaries a couple hundred thousand dollars so we were disparaging of the USFL,” Baab said. “We threw that in after. It was pure accident, that guy just fell down.”

It seems inexplicable now, but throwing a random musical performance in the middle of a film wasn’t as ridiculous of a concept back in the mid ’80s, with MTV having just debuted several years earlier. Local group The Michael Stanley Band, who had several Top 40 hits earlier in the decade, added a song just to up the randomness quotient.

The video was a massive local success upon its release and quickly sold out of the approximately 40,000 copies that were produced. As the 1986 season continued, the Browns’ quest for an actual ring started to look like more of a real possibility. The team finished 12-4 and advanced to the AFC Championship game versus the Denver Broncos, where John Elway orchestrated “The Drive,” taking the Broncos 98 yards on the way to a game-tying touchdown at the end of the fourth quarter. Denver won 23-20 in overtime, advancing to Super Bowl XXI.

“Elway….” Garcia-Baab sighs. “The bane of our existence.”

She hadn’t told her husband prior to the game, but Garcia-Baab had worked out a major distribution deal to mass produce Masters of the Gridiron if the Browns won the AFC.

“After the first Denver game, Lolis is really distraught,” Baab said. “And I remember telling her ‘Honey, it’s OK, we’ll get ‘em next year. And she tells me we just lost a $250,000 signing bonus and 10% of national and international distribution. That’s when I punched the windshield out.”

While the video didn’t get the mainstream attention that a Super Bowl appearance would have brought, it’s managed to remain one of the fond memories in the lives of its creators.

“When we meet each other now, [our lines and character names] are the first thing we say to each other,” Baab said. “When I see Clay Matthews now, I call him Clayrock. They all call me Baabarian. It’s just what we do. All the names came from this silly video.”

The Baabs, who have two adult daughters, now live in Austin, Texas, where Mike works as a personal trainer and frequently competes in Scottish Highland Games competitions, winning three world championships. After a career in video production, radio and television, Garcia-Baab is now the director of communications for the Girl Scouts of Central Texas.

“All of the children [of the former Browns players] like Clay’s son Clay [Green Bay Packers linebacker Clay Matthews], our daughters and Dan Fike’s daughter…all these kids now love this video,” Garcia-Baab said. “They all have it. Every time we get together we watch it and laugh. It’s become this campy thing.”

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